


Before, There was Cold

by Emily_Nicaoidh



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Blood Drinking, Captain Watson, Developing Relationship, Gen, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, No Mary, No dfp here, brief noncon violence, dubcon, ignoring TAB for now, implied bottomlock, lowkey dark!john, not very graphic violence but i went ahead and added that tag just to be safe, post-S3, smoll!Sherlock, vampire!Sherlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-07-19 18:09:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7372177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emily_Nicaoidh/pseuds/Emily_Nicaoidh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is a touch-averse vampire who is terrified that his flatmate will find out his secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Um...ok...this just sort of happened. Let me know what you think? I've never written anything like this before. I don't know what is going through my head. 
> 
> apismel1fera.tumblr.com

“Mmmph,” Sherlock mumbled, toeing off his shoes as his knees hit the bed and he flopped face-first into the duvet.

“Oh, you.” John shook his head and deposited their bags on the floor. He sat on the side of the bed and ran a hand through Sherlock’s messy hair, tangling his fingers through the curls.

“Come here,” John said, and Sherlock turned to look up at John, but didn’t move.

“Why? Tired,” he said. It had been a long day of sitting motionless (or as close as a fidgety detective and bored doctor could manage) behind a dumpster followed by a sudden and unsuccessful chase through a sleepy Hebrides town that ended with the both of them wet, muddy, and exhausted.

“Come on, budge over,” John said, leaning closer to Sherlock and laying his wrist (warm, Jawn, John, Sherlock’s sleepy brain supplied helpfully) across Sherlock’s mouth. “A nightcap, shall we say?”

“Mmmph,” Sherlock agreed, this time mumbling because his mouth was full of John’s wrist and John’s warm blood.

“You daft git,” John said fondly, twining the fingers of his other hand into Sherlock’s hair. “We should have done this hours ago. You’re freezing, and not from the rain.”

Sherlock didn’t bother mumbling a reply; he knew John wasn’t looking for one. He closed his eyes, feeling the warmth (John, John, John) spreading through his bones, and gave a few more halfhearted licks at John’s wrist.

“Now we’ll both sleep better,” John said, yawning as he pulled the covers down. In an instant Sherlock had wiggled himself under the covers and peered out of them at John looking for all the world like a very snug, very tall caterpillar. “I get worried about you sometimes, you know.” John pulled off his shoes and socks, then climbed in after him.

—  
It hadn’t always been like this. Before John there was the constant cold, the chill that no amount of wrapping himself in scarves and the Belstaff could stave off. Sherlock didn’t like to think too much about that part of his life; the best that could be said of it was that it was over. Now there was John, and everything was softness and warmth and light.

\--

Things had begun to unravel soon after John moved back to Baker Street permanently. That morning, as he set his wedding ring on the kitchen counter and hailed a cab, carrying is army-issue duffel and a cardboard box, John had felt a sense of rightness, a certainty that finally his life was done with change and catastrophe. He would go back to Baker Street, where he felt more at home than anywhere else in the world, and he intended to poke and Sherlock until he agreed to give up drugs, and guide him through detox, and everything that had been so heart-shatteringly terrible for the past year would sort itself out. John was so absorbed in his thoughts that he barely saw London passing by outside the cab windows.

Sherlock was at home when the cab stopped in front of 221, and John could see his outline through the curtains – he must have been watching for him to arrive. By the time John had ascended the stairs, however, Sherlock was flopped on the couch, looking as though he had been there all day. John only smiled, shook his head, and went upstairs to deposit his belongings in the room that really had never stopped being his. There was nothing he could think of to say that didn’t sound idiotic, redundant, or pathetic in his head, so he never said “I’m home,” or “I’ll have that second bedroom, if it’s still available,” or worse yet “Oh God Sherlock, I made a terrible mistake and I missed you so much.”

\--

The next time Sherlock and John arrived at New Scotland Yard in a shared cab, Anderson happened to be leaving the building just as they were walking towards it, and Sherlock cringed at the nasty smile that spread across Anderson’s face.

“Tagging along with your boyfriend again, are you?” Anderson sneered, and Sherlock wondered if this time John might actually hit him. He could count on one hand the number of times he had seen John look this angry – but somehow John just smiled pleasantly at Anderson. This was deeply unsettling, and Sherlock said the only thing he could think of to restore some normalcy to the conversation.

“Charming as usual, Anderson,” Sherlock shot back. “You, one the other hand, have not had a date in the how long is it now? Four months since Donovan left you?” He chanced a look at John, who grinned at him. All right. This is still normal, at least.

“Oi, what took you two so long?” Lestrade called out upon noticing them from across the floor.

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“Ever the dramatic, Lestrade,” he said, while John smirked. Well. That was one potential disaster avoided, at least.

“We’ve got one dead body and some kind of weird messages keep coming out all our cell phones, ” Lestrade said, his voice rising. “It’s driving me bloody crazy.”

“Coming out how?” Sherlock asked.

“Everyone’s phone will ring at once, and when we answer them, there’s nobody on the other end, just weird music and a recorded message,” Lestrade said. “It’s freaked quite a few people out and they’ve stopped answering.”

“Hmm.” Sherlock pulled his phone out, fishing through the settings menu for…there. “How many messages have there been so far? And how much time passed between messaged? And did any of you have the foresight to record any of these? Were they all the same, or different messages each time? We’ll have to wait for another anyway…but…” Sherlock trailed off, looking at Lestrade expectantly.

“Yeah, I started recording them after the second one,” Lestrade replied. “I am an actual detective, you know. ” Lestrade tapped his phone a few times, then turned up the volume and held it up so they could hear better.  
A cheery Scottish folk tune played for a few seconds, and then a woman began to count, pausing for a breath between numbers.

“Dim. Dau. Pedwar. Un.Tri. Chwech. Dim. Wyth. Ugain. Trigain ac un. Cant ac tri. Wyth ar hugain.”

“Well, that’s useless,” John said. “Bunch of gibberish and some old fashioned music?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “It’s not. It’s very enlightening, actually. Scottish folk tune at the beginning, but the numbers in Welsh? Because they’re numbers, John. They’re trying to make us assume something about where they’re sending from. Probably both are red herrings, and the message is coming from neither Scotland nor Wales.”

John shook his head and Lestrade only stared. “Right, so that just leaves…the entire rest of the world. Glad we’ve narrowed it down, then.”

“What? No, its….you two know what numbers stations are, right? Your suspect is copying one. There used to be one broadcast from Muswell Hill that played a Scottish folk tune as the start tone, but the numbers were in English. I don’t know why he changed it…”

“Numbers station? What?” Lestrade looked utterly lost.

Sherlock muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “do you not know what Google is,” and John stifled a laugh.

Too slow, they were both too slow, and if he didn’t get to that flat in Muswell Hill soon it was going to kill him.

“Come on, John,” Sherlock said, and swept from the room. Lestrade would follow, or he wouldn’t. It was likely that John had his gun with him and Sherlock had his set of lock picks in his coat pocket and well, between the gun and the lock picks and Sherlock’s mind and John’s Captain Watson Command Voice, as he privately titled it, they could handle anything.

By the time they got into a cab, Sherlock was deep in his mind palace. John was talking, of course, he could tell from the tone of voice that he was asking questions, but it wasn’t important. Predicting what they would find at the flat was important. The old numbers station had stopped broadcasting in the early 90’s; it was unlikely that the equipment would have been abandoned there. Not too many vacant lots in that neighborhood, no, the property would have been sold, possibly more than once, and whoever the new owners were….well, balance of probabilities their murderer was not using his own home as a murder base, so that meant he either had the owners’ permission (unlikely) or he was using the property (or part of it, basement most likely) without their knowledge. Add in the phone messages to the Yarders’ phones, mimicking an old numbers station, it was almost as if…

“Oh,” Sherlock breathed, coming back to himself. He looked out the window, thinking they must be almost there, but the cab was barely a block from Scotland Yard.

“What? I know that Oh. Tell me,” John commanded.

“It’s not…” Sherlock trailed off a bit, blushing.

“You know something, and you’re going to tell me what it is,” John replied.

“Fine. I think the murderer sent that numbers station look-alike message to the Yarders to lure them out to his little murder nest. He’s probably expecting us,” Sherlock said.

“We’re…walking into an ambush.”

“Riding. We’re in a cab John, do keep up.”

“Nope, we’re not doing that, Sherlock. Now you tell me everything you know or even think you know about this place, and when we get out of the cab you do exactly as I say and we may come out of this alive,” John commanded.

“Y-yes John,” Sherlock stuttered, and began to outline his deductions.

By the time the cab stopped in front of a brick townhouse in Muswell Hill, John had the beginnings of a plan and Sherlock just wanted it to be over. He shivered and wrapped the Belstaff more tightly around himself—John mustn’t notice. John must never suspect. The sooner this was over, the sooner he could get at the bottle of pills that he had stashed at the back of his sock index. Normally he didn’t go out on crime investigations without at least one or two hidden in an inside pocket of his coat, but he had forgotten them this morning, and—damn. And it had been about twenty-four hours since his last pill, and he already had chills, which gave him approximately an hour and a half before hypothermia started to set in.

Sherlock knew this from experience, of course. When he has first realized the truth of what had been done to him—that it was not merely a drug-induced hallucination but a grim, physical reality—he had tested his body’s new limits in every way he could think of. He knew exactly how long he could go between pills, and exactly how much extra time taking more than his usual dose (two) pills would give him.

Because it was always pills, never blood, and especially never fresh blood. Blood was messy, unpredictable, and quite likely disease ridden. No, the pills were better. He made them himself in Molly’s pathology lab from compounds he synthesized from scratch, a novel synthesis birthed from his desperation to avoid interaction with others, to avoid touching. The pills were perfectly calibrated to give him everything this absurd body required, they had a shelf-life of a year at room temperature, and they were smaller than a paracetamol tablet. He was a chemist, after all.

An hour and a half—Sherlock checked his watch. Half four. That gave him until six pm before he would start displaying symptoms that John would not be able to ignore, an hour and a half in which to solve this crime before the truth of his nature made itself known to John and quite possibly ruined his entire carefully constructed existence. John would leave, and without John there was nothing.

Sherlock blew out a slow breath. Somehow, they were now standing on the pavement in front of the townhouse. If the suspect was at home and possessed of even a modicum of intelligence he surely would have noticed them already.

“Here’s how this is going to go,” Captain Watson said, drawing Sherlock’s attention back out of his mind palace. “You are going to go have a look in the basement windows, and come back and tell me if you think he’s home. If you think he’s out, we’ll go in, but if he’s there we’ll call Lestrade and wait for him to get here with backup.”

“Fine,” Sherlock replied, intending to do nothing of the sort. There wasn’t time to wait for Lestrade, who would undoubtedly be required to obtain a warrant before breaking and entering into the townhouse.

He crept up to the side of the building and peered through the basement windows. The basement was an absolute disaster. There was a narrow trail winding through the basement, which seemed to be all one room divided up by enormous mounds of junk. Stalagmites made of newspaper reached almost to the ceiling, supported by heaps of pop bottles and pizza boxes.

A light was on in one corner, just barely visible around a particularly large pizza box pillar, and Sherlock hummed to himself. Perfect. They would go in, John could tackle him or something, and they would handcuff him to the doorframe and be on their way home to Baker Street and pills with plenty of time to spare.

He turned and nodded briefly to John, then headed around the corner for the basement door. The lock was an embarrassment and he had it picked and the door opened by the time John caught up with him.

This, as it happened, was Sherlock’s first mistake. While he was holding the door open for John, a breeze blew through the door, swirling some loose newspapers around a pile of bottles, making no small amount of noise.

“Ok, let’s go check this place out,” John said, and Sherlock winced. Lying by omission about the suspect’s presence: mistake number two.

“Let’s check these guys out,” one of the stalagmites echoed him in a singsong voice. . “Welcome, Mister Holmes and Doctor Watson! I must say I’m glad you came alone. It makes this next part so much easier for me.” A squat, balding man emerged from behind the newspaper pile and John groaned.

“Dammit, Sherlock,” he said. “You were supposed to come back and wait for Lestrade if he was home!”

Sherlock shrugged. He didn’t recall promising that.

There was a flash of movement out of the corner of his right eye, and then a burning pain in his right arm. Damn. His hour-and-a-half time limit did not include the possibility of losing any blood. If he lost under a pint he should have about thirty minutes, but any more….hypothermia was right around the corner. Sherlock stumbled against the doorframe and prudently decided to sit down.

“Fucking hell! He threw a knife at you!” John yelped, and launched himself at the suspect.

“John, wait!” Sherlock attempted to say, but it came out somewhat slurred, and John ignored him in favor of head-butting him and then twisting the man’s knife-throwing arm behind his back.

John and Other John had a solid hold on the suspect, and dragged him over to where Sherlock sat. Other John said something, and John stuck his hand out to Sherlock, who flinched back. He mustn’t find out.

“Sherlock. SHERLOCK. The handcuffs,” Other John said.

Handcuffs. Right. “Coat pocket,” Sherlock said. He fished them out with his left hand and tossed them to John.

“Well, have a good evening,” John said cheerily to the suspect, who was struggling futilely against the handcuffs that held him to the other side of the doorframe. “Scotland Yard should be around to collect you soon.”

John hauled a protesting Sherlock to his feet, and together they made their way back to the cab.

We aren’t going to make it, Sherlock realized. The blood flow had mostly stopped, but not soon enough. It would heal, but he needed his pills. He needed to get to his pills and avoid going to a hospital. John would want him to go to a hospital, though. These thoughts swirled around his mind like leaves in muddy water, and by the time the cab stopped in front of 221B Baker Street, Sherlock was shaking too hard to hide it, and John guided him up the stairs with a hand on the small of his back.

Sherlock could feel the warmth of him, even through his coat.

“Bathroom, now.” It wasn’t a question or a suggestion, and John steered him towards the door without letting go of him.

“John, I—I’m fine,” Sherlock started to protest, but John shook his head.

“You probably are,” he agreed, “but humor me?”

Somehow, they had made it into the bathroom, and John pointed at the toilet. Unsure what to do, Sherlock sat.

John stood in front of him—too close, warm, warm warm—and pulled his arms through the Belstaff. The wool was torn where the knife had gone in.

“We’ll get it fixed,” John promised, noticing Sherlock’s forlorn look at his beloved coat.

Sherlock shook his head. “John, I—it’s not—can you just,” he finished, tugging at the buttons on his shirt. John nodded and stepped back a little.

“Ok, I’m going to go get the first aid kid from the kitchen. Do you want me to bring you a cuppa?”

“No, but….in my sock index. In the very back. There’s a bottle. Can you bring it?” Sherlock asked. It was the last thing he wanted, but did not think he was currently capable of walking to his room himself to retrieve it, and he figured that John knowing about the bottle was better than him passing out from hypothermic shock in front of him in the bathroom.

“Fine. But if it’s anything stronger than paracetamol, Sherlock, I swear you’re going to pee in a jar every day for the rest of your life,” John warned, but he went to get the bottle.

Sherlock finished unbuttoning his shirt and pulled it off. It had soaked up most of the blood and was probably not salvageable.

“Right,” John said when he returned. “Let me clean your arm a bit, and we’ll see if you need stitches.”

“Can I—,” Sherlock reached out for the bottle, but John held it just outside his reach.

“Not until you tell me what it is,” he said.

“It’s—you’re—,” Sherlock fumbled for the words. “It’s for a…condition I came to have while I was away, those years. I have to take it.” He was aware that he was making it sound as if he had some sort of chronic illness, but really, what better way to describe it? He would die without the pills, he knew that. The alternative was unthinkable.

“Sherlock…I’m sorry,” John replied. “I thought…well. I’m sorry.” He passed over the bottle.

“You thought I was using again. It’s fine. I knew you would, that’s why I hid them,” Sherlock replied, unscrewing the cap and shaking two robin-s egg blue pills into his hand.

John stiffened.

“Sherlock….”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Then tell me what it is, because it looks a hell of a lot like oxycodone.”

“It’s….please. Please just let me take them first,” Sherlock said, hating the whiny note that had crept into his voice.

John didn’t reply. He dumped some iodine onto a towel and wiped it across Sherlock’s arm, perhaps a bit more roughly than strictly necessary.

“It’s deeper than I thought,” John said as he finished with the iodine. “I’d feel better about this if you let me put a few stitches – eight at the most. It’s not long but it’s deep. ”

Sherlock glanced from the pills to the first aid kit, then back to John.

“Oh, fine,” he relented. “Take them.”

Sherlock swallowed them both dry before the last consonant was even out of John’s mouth.

Then John put a hand on his arm, just below the cut, to prepare to stitch him up, and they both flinched.

“HOLY fuck, Sherlock! You’re freezing!”

Sherlock took a deep breath. The universe was clearly conspiring to ruin his life.

“John, can you…can you listen to something, while you sew,” he said.

“No, that’s right out, we’re going straight to the hospital! I’m surprised you aren’t in shock. Your temperature is way too low,” John said.

“I’ll explain the pills,” Sherlock offered. “If you stitch me up. I’ll explain them and then if you still want me to go to the hospital I will.” It’s the very last concession that he has to offer, because he has never looked into what the medical establishment knows about his condition.

John squared his shoulders and gave a brief nod. “Fine.”

“Right.” Sherlock stared at the floor. At the first stick of the needle through his skin he winced, then swallowed.

“Right. Something happened to me when I was…away. I thought I was hallucinating, at first, but.” He paused. “But I was actually clean at the time, had been for years, so. Eliminating the impossible, and so forth…”

“The pills are my own design. I said that I have to have them to live—that’s—there are other things that I could have instead of them.” He paused, looked down at his arm. The stitches were done; John was washing the needle in the sink and replacing the contents of the first aid kit.

“You’re leaving something out,” John said. “You’re not a very good liar, at least not to me.”

Despair welled up in Sherlock. This was the end, then. He would have to say the hateful words.

“Blood,” he clarified. “They replace blood. I synthesized an imitation of the relevant components of human blood, put them into pill form. It means I don’t have to…” He trailed off. “Don’t have to drink it,” he finished.

There. It was done. His eyes were itching, burning, and he couldn’t stand for John to see him for one more second.

“I’m going to bed,” Sherlock said, rising stiffly to his feet. “Rest assured I pose no threat to you. I’ll move out in the morning if that’s what you need.”

John stood by the sink as Sherlock stumbled from the room.

A door slammed.

A few minutes later, John thought he heard sniffles, but turned and walked to the front door in a daze.

\--

In retrospect, John thought that he should have expected that the pub he chose on the simple virtue of its being the first one that he saw would already have Mycroft Holmes sitting inside a shadowy, corner booth. After so many years of acquaintance with the Holmes brothers, he should have expected that Mycroft would, by some intrusive surveillance or freaky leap of logic, be able to predict which pub John would choose before he even became aware that he was going to go to a pub. John rolled his eyes and went to the bar to get a pint.

“Well, here we are, so feel free to get started with the threatening and lecturing,” John said wearily, sliding into the booth opposite Mycroft.

The elder Holmes brother said nothing, watching him with a raised eyebrow.

“This is what you do, isn’t it?” John asked. “Watch us both like hawks, and kidnap me for a ‘chat’ when you think something bad has happened?”

“This is hardly a kidnapping,” Mycroft pointed out. “Perhaps I fancied a…pint.” He gestured at the glass of amber ale in front of him.

John rolled his eyes. “If you actually drink that I will be shocked.”

“As you say,” Mycroft replied. “But I’m afraid in this case there isn’t much that I can tell you. It is quite possible that you know more about Sherlock’s…situation than I do, Doctor Watson.”

John took a long drink and was silent for a moment.

“I…I don’t understand,” he eventually said.

“I’m being perfectly clear,” Mycroft replied, rolling his eyes. “You are, doubtless, aware that there are been multiple…periods in my brother’s life when I have lost track of him, so to speak.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” John asked. “I swear Mycroft, I am tired of your word games. Just tell me whatever it is you stalked me to a pub to tell me.”

“I am endeavoring to explain to you that whatever change you have observed, or think you have observed in my brother happened when he was….beyond my reach, and that I can give you no more information than you already possess. It is rather more likely that you know more than I,” he finished.

“Um,” John said eloquently, “then you mean you aren’t…” he trailed off, unsure how to finish the thought.

“You thought that I was also a vampire?” Mycroft asked, and John choked a little at the word. “No. This is something that was done to my brother, or possibly something that he chose…though I rather think…well. No matter. But rest assured that it is not some peculiarity of the Holmes line.“

John drained the rest of his pint and went to the bar for another.

“Why are you here, Mycroft?” He asked finally, after a few sips of the second pint.

“I was hoping you could answer a few questions concerning my brother,” Mycroft replied smoothly.

“Right, that’s a laugh,” John said. “You know everything about everyone from your bloody cameras and your bloody deductions and you want to ask me questions about your own little brother?” He finished his second pint—where had that all gone? John only remembered taking one or two sips of it at the most—and stood up.

“All I know is that he’s freezing cold, and that you didn’t do a damn thing to figure out what happened to him or how or anything, so you—” John waved his hand at Mycroft, somewhat unsteadily, “can piss right off. I’m going home, because in case you didn’t know I had to put eight stitches in his arm today thanks to some idiotic hoarder-murderer, and I want to make sure he’s not gone into some kind of shock. If he can even go into shock, that is. So piss off, Mycroft.” For good measure, he reached across the table, grabbed Mycroft’s (untouched, as expected) amber ale and drained the glass in one shot.

With that pronouncement, John turned abruptly and headed for the door. If he was slightly too tipsy to catch the muttered “damn goldfish” that followed after him, well, that was probably for the better.

He stalked down the street towards 221B, determined to do his bloody—he giggled a bit at the pun—duty as a doctor and check up on his patient.

\---

The walk home sobered him, and by the time he walked through the door of Baker Street and ascended the seventeen steps to their sitting room, John had a clear head. Sherlock was curled on the couch with one of Mrs. Hudson’s afghans wrapped around himself. Thinking that he was asleep, John crept through the doorway and didn’t put the light on.

“John?” Sherlock’s craned his neck to peer over his shoulder at John. From where he stood in the doorway, John could see that his flatmate’s shoulders were shaking.

“Sherlock, are…are you alright?”

“Cold. I’m so cold and I can’t get warm. The pills should have worked by now. Everything is hateful,” Sherlock mumbled.

“Tell me what you need,” John said.

“The pills. I didn’t—I didn’t account for blood loss. I should have taken four,” he said.

“You’re cold again, yeah?” John asked, touching the back of his hand to Sherlock’s forehead, which was glacially cold. “And the pills will help?”

Sherlock nodded. “I’ll be back to normal an hour after. They take a bit of time to work,” he said.

“Yeah, no,” John decided, and squared his shoulders. “I’ve only been here for about five minutes and I can’t stand to see you like this for another hour. There’s got to be a faster way to fix you. Sit up a little,” he said, kneeling by the side of the sofa.

“What—what are you—,” Sherlock asked, flustered.

“You know what,” John replied. “Where is best? I’m assuming you’ve done this before.”

“N-normally neck,” Sherlock replied, his shivers making him stutter. “But I don’t…I…no.”

“How about here?” John asked, rolling up the sleeve of his jumper and unbuttoning his shirt cuff.

Sherlock nodded. His eyes were very wide, and he held perfectly still as John raised his wrist to Sherlock’s lips. Their eyes met right as John’s wrist touched Sherlock’s lips, and he read an expression of utter terror in Sherlock’s eyes.

Sherlock must have realized he’d given something away, because he closed his eyes immediately and bit.

John’s impulse was to jerk his hand away but he forced himself to stay still, and after a moment the sharp sting lessened, and he could swear—was Sherlock humming, a little?

“Take what you need,” John whispered.

“Mmmmf,” Sherlock hummed. “John, I…” He dabbed at the last drops welling from the small punctures with his lips, then looked up at John anxiously. “Are you…I mean….I can…..go,” he finished.

“I am fine. You are fine. Go to sleep, yeah?” John tucked the afghan back around Sherlock’s shoulders as he stood and pushed him gently back down into the sofa. “I’m going to stay and keep an eye on you, for a bit.”

In the time it took John to cross to his armchair and settle in it, Sherlock was already asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so here Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective and sometime vampire, found himself lying on the floor of his sitting room at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning, feeling as warm and cosy as if he were wrapped in a wool blanket in front of a roaring fire. 
> 
> Two mornings after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First and foremost: if you read this and think that there are other tags/warnings that would be appropriate that I have not added already, PLEASE TELL ME ASAP. I don't want to blindside anyone with something they don't want to see. I've added the non-con tag because there is a small amount of non-con contact in this chapter. If that is not something you want to read, let's part here as friends. (See you over in This Message Could Not Be Delivered later on this week!)
> 
> An enormous thank you to artfulinanities for reading some the parts of this chapter that I was most uncertain about and helping me talk through my weird, disorganized thoughts.

Sherlock groaned and rolled over, flopping unceremoniously off of the couch and landing in a heap on the floor. He rubbed at his eyes with his hands, trying to remember what on earth could have possessed him to sleep in the sitting room rather than his large, comfortable, and most importantly private bedroom. 

A twinge of pain in his arm brought all the details back: ducking away from Lestrade, the knife-throwing murder suspect, John. John. The worst thing that Sherlock could imagine (okay, second-worst, he admitted to himself—the worst did not bear thinking of) had happened the night before and…he felt wonderful. Floaty. Warm, when he likely should have been shivering already. Sherlock picked up his phone: it was already after 9 am. He definitely should have been shivering already. 

His current supply of pills was from the third batch he had made. The first had been too strong, and when he had shown up at a crime scene after taking one of those pills, Lestrade had accused him of being back on drugs (technically true, but not the drugs Lestrade meant), then told him he was burning up and to go home and sleep off his fever. The second batch of pills had become contaminated when he was called away from babysitting a delicate step of the synthesis to a chase, and….well, he had been making them in a pathology lab. There was no shortage of possible contaminants. Sherlock was fairly certain the second batch were contaminated only with the common, dull Streptococcus pneumoniae, but found he was not actually all that interested in testing this out. He’d thrown them in the incinerator down in the Bart’s cadaver lab. 

So much for three days of work, during which he subsisted on bagged blood provided by Mycroft (in both the immediate and original sense, he suspected) and delivered by Anthea, and worked around the clock until his third batch was ready. At least by that point he had the synthesis and compounding process down to an art, and had doubled the amount of pills he made in that round. After three nearly sleepless days holed up in Molly’s lab, he had a year’s worth of pure blood-substitute pills. He had carefully cleaned his glassware, packed everything away into foam-lined cases, and hied himself back to Baker Street with the fruits of his labors. 

He kept only a month’s supply in the bottle that normally lived at the back of his sock index, preferring to secure the rest in a safe underneath his bed. He took two pills every morning, as soon as he woke up, and was warmed up to a more human temperature within thirty minutes. If he took another two pills before midnight, his temperature never dipped below thirty-five Celsius. 

And so here Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective and sometime vampire, found himself lying on the floor of his sitting room at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning, feeling as warm and cosy as if he were wrapped in a wool blanket in front of a roaring fire. 

Bagged blood had never done this for him. While he was working on the pills, he drank infrequently, and only the minimum amount necessary to stave off hypothermia. The blood was disgusting and had turned his stomach, and pills had seemed vastly preferable. The pills had no side effects, were tiny (might as well put that chemistry degree to use), and in a pique of whimsy, had a pleasant, robin’s-egg blue colour. 

No, the warmth that currently hummed through his veins could not be attributed to the fact that he had drunk liquid blood for the first time in almost a year. Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut, turned onto his side. Responsibility for this could be laid squarely on one person, and one person only. It was John Watson’s blood that had done this to him, turned his veins to sunlight and warmth. 

A snuffling noise from somewhere above him drew Sherlock’s attention back to reality. 

“Hullo,” John said, unfolding himself from his armchair and stretching, “why are you on the floor?” 

Sherlock froze. How had he not noticed that John was still in the room? His eyes being shut for most of the time he had been awake seemed a paltry excuse. 

“Um,” he tried. His throat seemed to stick to itself. “I rolled over and fell off?”

John yawned, then shuffled over, grabbed his wrist, and pulled a slightly off-balance Sherlock to his feet. 

“Your temperature seems fine this morning,” John noted. “Any chance of me getting a look at those stitches? I’m worried that I was too keyed up to put them in straight last night.”

Sherlock did not completely trust his brain at the moment, so he didn’t tell John that his stitches were always straighter and more precise when he was keyed up, and instead extended his stitched-up arm for John’s inspection. Fingers ghosted along the stitches, which were of course far more precise than John had expected, and eventually John nodded, satisfied. 

“It’ll do,” he said. One finger traced idly along the stitches, and Sherlock’s shiver had nothing to do with his failure at homeostasis. 

John looked as though he was about to say something, but Sherlock’s phone rang. He answered it to a tirade from Lestrade, who had clearly worked himself up into a fury before calling.

Sherlock held the phone away from his ear, but sill managed to catch such Lestrade classics as “You can’t just handcuff a man to a door and leave him there,” and “you basically kidnapped him,” and “have you ever heard of warrants?” 

“We’re busy, Lestrade,” Sherlock replied when his phone quieted down. 

“Oh, paying attention again are you?” Lestrade asked. “Either you two are coming down here and giving statements before noon or you are banned from cases indefinitely. You know that chief inspector is still on my arse about you consulting.”

“We’ll be there,” John said, leaning in close to the phone. “Let me just convince this madman to eat something and we’ll be right over.”

Sherlock’s breath hitched at “eat something”, and he stared at John. John chuckled and pried Sherlock’s phone out of his hand, hit end call, and set it on the sofa. 

“Right,” John said, going to the kitchen and switching the kettle on. “Have you taken your pills this morning?” 

Sherlock shook his head. “Not cold.”

“When do you normally take them?” John asked. “Do you have a schedule?”

“Two in the morning and two in the evening before midnight,” Sherlock said automatically. “But I’m not cold. I don’t need them yet.”

“Sherlock, duckie, listen. I can’t see you like you were yesterday,” John said. “You are not going to put off taking your pills until you’re practically freezing to death.”

“Aren’t you…I don’t know, going to ask me a bunch of inane questions about all this?” Sherlock asked, waving his hand at the pill bottle on the coffee table. 

“I might do, yeah, if I thought you would actually answer them,” John said. “But I fancy I know you pretty well, Sherlock Holmes. So you are going to have a drink, and then we’re both going to have a cuppa, and then we’re going to go give our statements at the Yard.” 

A note of Captain Watson had crept into his voice, and John’s tone brooked no argument. 

“Y-yes, John,” Sherlock stammered. 

“What we did yesterday, was that good for you?” John asked, and somehow he had moved to stand very close to Sherlock very quickly.

“It, um…yes,” Sherlock eventually managed to say.

“Good,” John replied. At some point he had unbuttoned his cuffs, or maybe he had never refastened them after last night, Sherlock couldn’t be sure, and then John’s wrist was pressed against his lips and John, John, John was the only thought he could keep in his head. 

“I don’t like to see you all cold,” John murmured, his other hand on the back of Sherlock’s head, holding him in place. “You felt the way I’d always imagined you would be after you fell, and…” John swallowed; the dizziness of his thoughts had nothing to do with blood loss, he knew that for certain. “I had two years to imagine it. How cold you…it’s…too real,” he finished. “Please, Sherlock, for me. Don’t be cold.”

Sherlock licked away a few stray droplets and dared a glance up at John’s face. His eyes were a soft, and he flexed his fingers in Sherlock’s hair when he caught his gaze. 

“John, I…” Sherlock began, but John dropped his hands quickly. 

“It’s fine. It’s all fine. Come on, Lestrade is expecting us,” John said. 

“He can wait,” Sherlock replied, and headed for the shower. 

\--

Lestrade was not pleased when they walked into his office at five minutes before noon. Sherlock rolled his eyes when Lestrade complained about them following the letter of his instructions while still managing to be a huge pain in the arse, or something like that. Sherlock couldn’t be certain-he tuned Lestrade’s voice out almost immediately he began speaking in favour of sneaking glances at John. 

John, who was behaving in the most fascinating and inexplicable manner. He smirked a little when Lestrade asked him how his evening had been, and hen refused to elaborate. Sherlock could put that down to John’s obvious danger kink, but then there was the impatient way John cut off half of Lestrade’s remarks, tried to finish his sentences, and generally acted as if he had somewhere better to be. 

Sherlock couldn’t imagine where that could possibly be. John often acted this way when he had a date lined up for the evening, but he had gone through John’s phone while he was showering after Sherlock had finished using up all the hot water, and there were no texts to indicate that he had a date or even a potential date. 

“Oi, Sherlock, are you listening to me?” Lestrade demanded, snapping his fingers near Sherlock’s ear.

“No.” Sherlock saw no reason to lie. Lestrade was being tiresome and he did not appreciate the sudden noise. 

“What is with you two?” Lestrade asked. “You’re a space case and John’s mooning over his hot date last night.”

“Wrong,” Sherlock said, bored. “John didn’t have a date last night.”

“Greg….” John’s voice took on a slight edge. “Don’t.”

“What, you don’t want to talk about it in front of Sherlock? He’s hardly paying attention to either of us,” Lestrade replied. “You got off with someone, don’t lie. I am an actual detective, in case either of you forgot.”

Sherlock grabbed a sheaf of paperwork off the corner of Lestrade’s desk and shook it at him. “Didn’t you call us in here to fill these inane things out? Let’s get on it with so we can leave.”

“Oh, suddenly Sherlock Holmes is volunteering to help with paperwork? I don’t buy it,” Lestrade said. “You are trying to distract me, probably because I’m getting close to figuring out something you don’t want me to know.” He glanced between the two of them, looking for a tell. Lestrade was fairly confident that he knew all of Sherlock’s tells after seeing him high and defenceless so many times, but this time the detective’s mien gave nothing away.

“There’s nothing to bloody well figure out!” Sherlock yelled, losing all patience. “I’ll email you my statement. I’m not staying here and listening to this.”

He wrapped his coat more tightly around himself and swept from the room. 

\--

John took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Greg, mate, I wish you wouldn’t have said all that,” he said. 

“What, can’t take a little ribbing?” Lestrade asked. “Come on, everyone here’s been betting on when you two will finally hook up for ages. There’s no way you both don’t already know that.”

“I knew, yeah, but I don’t think Sherlock did,” John replied. “And Greg, we’re not…yeah. We didn’t hook up, ok? We’re not together. So drop it.”

Lestrade eyed him suspiciously, as though John were trying to pull one over on him, but John didn’t crack a smile and eventually Lestrade had to believe him. 

“You didn’t?” Lestrade was aghast. “But the way you looked at him! And he was more prickly than usual! So what, you went on a secret date last night Sherlock doesn’t know about? Because don’t lie to me John, I think I know what it looks like when you ‘re pleased about how last night played out.”

“I didn’t have a date last night,” John said wearily. “And I really wish you would drop this. Don’t mention it again in front of Sherlock.”

Lestrade stared at John. “But you have—I mean, you do have feelings for him,” he insisted.

“Of bloody well course I do,” John growled. “That’s not the point.”

“How the hell is that not the point? Say something to him!” Lestrade shot back. 

John sighed. “Look, I know you mean well, mate, but I have it on pretty good authority that he doesn’t feel things that way, ok?” John said.

Lestrade snorted. “No way. Anyone with eyes can see he’s head over heels for you.”

“Believe me, Greg, he isn’t. He had plenty of opportunities to make that known, and he didn’t. So for the last time, fucking drop it.” 

“Hey, Chief, did you get the statements on the—Oh, out without your boyfriend?” Donovan poked her head around the office door and called to them.

”Don’t you start on that with me too,” John warned. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Whatever,” Donovan said, and rolled her eyes. “But it is weird you’re here without him.”

“What’s your point, Donovan?” John asked tiredly. First Lestrade, now Donovan….The taunting was getting old.

“I’m just…he’s seemed off, lately,” Donovan said, a little hesitant. “Just...keep an eye on him, will you? As much as he bugs me I do want him to be okay.”

“Yeah. He probably has been,” John said, a little surprised. “And I will.” And I will also get the hell out of here before I get asked any more insane questions and end up punching somebody, he added in his head. 

\-- 

Sherlock broke into his stash of comfort chemicals. He knew John would not approve, but Lestrade had been insufferable with his implications and sly looks. He needed an outlet for his frustration and if he turned back to chemicals, well, he could hardly be blamed. 

This was his justification to himself, though he knew his excuses were shoddy at best. Sherlock found it difficult to care. It was all fine for John- he could just go find someone to date in a pub, or at work, or literally walking down the street because apparently all of London was attracted to John Watson. It wasn’t that simple for him. Finding someone who could withstand his prickly disposition long enough to even be friends was nigh impossible (proof of concept: his only friend, John Watson), and letting someone closer…well, after Serbia that was impossible, wasn’t it? 

Except he had, entirely by accident, let John closer, and look where that had gotten him. John was avoiding him in preference to spending more time at the Yard with Lestrade, and Sherlock was sulking alone at home with his chemicals. 

Yes, letting John know his secret had been a mistake of the highest order. Sherlock fished his second-best Bunsen burner out from where John had attempted to hide it under the sink, attached it to the gas canister he had set out, and lit it. 

The little vials he had retrieved from the safe where he kept his regular pills were lined up along the edge of the table in a precise row. Sherlock always opened them in the same order, always used them in the same order. There was something comforting about the constancy of their effect. What was in the vials would never lie to him, never betray him, never lead him to think one thing and then deny it vehemently to Lestrade mere hours later. 

He opened the first vial. 

Time slowed down, or maybe it sped up, and consequently Sherlock had only the foggiest idea of how long it had been when John appeared in the doorway. Sherlock set down the spray bottle he was holding. 

“I though’ I told you no Bunsen burners’n the kitchen,” John said, crossing his arms across his chest. A few of his vowels were a little more broad than usual-he must have been drinking, Sherlock decided.

“I don’t remember that conversation, and I have an eidetic memory,” Sherlock replied. “Besides, I’m not doing anything dangerous.” To illustrate, he picked up the spray bottle again and puffed it at the flame. A mist of 0.5 molar sodium hydroxide glowed red in the flame as it burned. 

“See, what if that hit somethin’? Ye’re basically making fireballs out of toxic metals in the kitchen,” John said. 

“That was sodium hydroxide. It’s fine.” 

“Tha’s literally lye.”

“It’s half molar.”

“I can read, Sherlock. Ye’ve got stron-strontium hydride on the counter and—fuck! Does that one have mercury in it?” John pointed at the offending vial. 

“I haven’t opened that one yet?” Sherlock offered. 

“Sherlock, please.” John uncrossed his arms and crossed them again. “Put the fire and the heavy metals away?”

“Why.” It wasn’t a question. Sherlock sprayed a few more puffs of the sodium solution into the flame for good measure.

“Aren’t ye flammable? Like more than um…regular people?” John asked. For a moment his face lit up with inspiration. “Oh! Are you doing this cause ye’re cold? I can help with that,” he said, and sauntered over to the kitchen table.

“I’m no more flammable than you are and I’m not cold,” Sherlock insisted.

“Mmmm,” John agreed, circling his hand around Sherlock’s wrist. “But yer thin, thinner than you were before you left. I need t’feed ye up a bit,” he said, and giggled. Sherlock caught a strong whiff of whiskey as he leaned in.

Sherlock wrenched his hand away, knocking over the still-lit Bunsen burner in the process. He lunged the tap and turned off the gas just as it was beginning to scorch a long scar into the table.

“I’m not a glutton! I don’t need to do this!”

“Hmmm, don’t you though? But maybe I need it.” John leaned in closer to Sherlock and took a deep breath, curling his hands around Sherlock’s waist and pulling him forward. “Come on, let me give ye what you need.” 

Sherlock flung himself backwards, breaking John’s grip, and fled to his room. 

“Sherlock! Open up!” John called, banging on the door with his fist. 

Sherlock ignored him. He’s drunk, he’s drunk, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he repeated to himself, but the litany did nothing to ease the leaden knot in his stomach. He took off his suit jacket and draped it over a chair, then slowly unbuttoned his shirt.

“Cmon, let me in! I just want to talk about this,” John yelled, hitting the door so hard that it rattled on the hinges. 

Sherlock dropped his shirt over his jacket, then slipped off his trousers. No point in putting on a dressing gown, as he was clearly not leaving the room until John was unconscious. He supposed it should have been obvious that John could be a violent drunk, given what he’d long ago deduced about his family history with alcohol, but seeing it play out in front of him…that stung, more than Sherlock cared to admit. 

He went to the door and checked that it was locked, then turned out the lights and got into bed, tucking the covers around himself like a caterpillar, and waited to see whether he would fall asleep before the yelling stopped.

 

\-- 

Sherlock woke up several hours later, in the quiet part of the early morning when the sky was hazy and pale. He stretched lazily and stood, wrapping his dressing gown around himself before unlocking his door and peering out into the hallway. 

It was empty. He let out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding, then went to the kitchen and switched on the lights. 

Sherlock’s next breath caught in his throat. 

John was sitting at the table, his head in his hands. He looked up when the lights came on, and his eyes were red-rimmed and wet. 

“Oh, Sherlock,” he said with a shudder. “What have I done?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once more, with feeling: if, now that you have read this, you feel that there are other tags/warnings that are appropriate, please tell me asap! I don't want to blindside anyone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’m not going to talk about it.” Sherlock drained the rest of his tea in one gulp and set the teacup in the sink. “I’m going to Bart’s. I’ll be back late. Don’t wait up.”
> 
> “Sherlock, wait,“ John said. “Did—did you take your pills this morning?”
> 
> Sherlock paused in the doorway, turned and faced John as he tied his scarf. “Yes,” he lied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are. Chapter 3. This one was a long time coming and if you're still reading this I really appreciate it. This chapter begins right on the heels of chapter 2.
> 
> I've updated the tags with this one; I'm not sure if what I thought I was hinting at in a certain scene of this chapter will come across to you all or not but I thought I should tag just to be safe. Please let me know if you think it worked/didn't work. This fic is a bit more daring than the kind of thing I usually write.
> 
> Cheers.

“I can’t imagine what you are referring to,” Sherlock said stiffly. “I’m sure you’ve done nothing at all.”

“Are you serious?” John asked.

“Are you?” Sherlock turned his back to John and busied himself with filling the kettle and switching it on.

“I’m sorry, Sherlock I’m so--”

“Don’t.” Sherlock stared into the kettle as the first few air bubbles began to rise to the surface of the water. “I’m so sorry Sherlock, I won’t do it again, I won’t come home drunk and handsy, I’ve never done anything like this before, I swear it won’t happen again,” he listed, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. “Does that about cover it?”

“I—well,” John cleared his throat. “Yes.”

“Fine.” Sherlock said, not taking his eyes off the almost-boiling water.

There was an interesting point where the noise made by the heating water got louder and louder until just as it began to boil, the noise dropped to a whisper. Admittedly, the property was more easily distinguished with boiling N2, but for those who knew what they were listening for it was possible to hear it in water’s phrase transition as well.

“I—Sherlock, it’s not fine. You can’t possibly—” John began to say.

The nose from the kettle dropped off, saving Sherlock from making a reply that would otherwise be required. He fished a bag of tea out of the tin and dropped it into a cup, then unplugged the kettle and poured in the water.

“It—we’ve got to talk about this,” John said to Sherlock’s back.

Sherlock watched his tea steep. The water closest to the bag took on an orangey tint that gradually spread outwards, and as he poked it with a spoon it swirled into the rest of the cup. He glanced at the fridge and decided – no way to get the fridge open and the milk out without turning to look at John. He dropped the spoon and sopping tea bag in the sink, then gingerly took a sip.

“I don’t see that we do,” Sherlock said, blowing on his tea to cool it.

“We really do,” John replied.

“I’m not going to talk about it.” Sherlock drained the rest of his tea in one gulp and set the teacup in the sink. “I’m going to Bart’s. I’ll be back late. Don’t wait up.”

“Sherlock, wait,“ John said. “Did—did you take your pills this morning?”

Sherlock paused in the doorway, turned and faced John as he tied his scarf. “Yes,” he lied.

He didn’t feel the slightest twinge of guilt at the relief that showed on John’s face.

“Good. That’s—good.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, but shut the door gently behind himself as he left.

\--

Sherlock took a roundabout route to Bart’s. He stopped at eight of the larger parks in London, collecting four soil samples from each. That blessedly occupied the rest of the morning and beyond, and it was well into the afternoon by the time he stepped through the doors of the pathology lab, his pockets bulging with carefully labeled plastic baggies of dirt. He made a mental note to himself to replenish the stash of plastic zipper bags that he normally kept in the pockets of his coat – he had used up almost all of them in the dirt-collecting project.

Molly was out, but she had either had the consideration to leave the lab unlocked or was tired of him picking the locks, and Sherlock spread out the array of sample bags on the slate-epoxy counter and settled in front of his favorite microscope. The Dirt Survey, as Sherlock called it, was on his schedule of experiments that he repeated annually. The various parks around London each had their own characteristic soil (and possibly more importantly, pollen) compositions and on more than one occasion, being able to determine that the mud on a suspect or victim’s person belonged to one park and not another had been the difference between a conviction and a mere hunch. He found a fresh box of slides and cover slips in a drawer and set them beside the microscope. He divided each baggie into three samples, tipped a bit of the first Regent’s Park sample onto a fresh slide, began looking through it for pollen.

The dirt samples from Regent’s Park, Richmond Park, Clapham Common, and Victoria Park were neatly recorded in tables in Sherlock’s lab notebook and he was just about to make the first slide from a Hampstead Heath sample when the power went out at the lab. Grumbling a little, Sherlock tipped the used slides into a sharps bin, then stacked the Hyde Park, St. James’s Park, Greenwich Park, and Hampstead Heath baggies into a drawer. He scribbled “DO NOT DISTURB - SH” on a piece of paper tape and stuck it on the drawer’s handle. Molly was usually the only other person to use this lab and if anyone could be trusted with the Dirt Survey it was her.

\--  
The flat was dark and cold, and Sherlock wrapped himself in a blanket and promptly fell asleep on the sofa.

“Sherlock? Are you awake? I’d…I’d like to talk, if that’s alright,” John said from the doorway.

Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut and pulled the blanket more tightly around his shoulders.

Then John was kneeling beside the sofa, a hand on his shoulder, and—“Fuck! You’re freezing!”

Sherlock cleared his throat. “I um. I may have been not ah. Entirely forthcoming earlier,” he mumbled.

“You didn’t take your pills this morning, did you?” John shook his head.

“No.” Sherlock shivered again in spite of the blanket.

“Do…do you want me,” John asked, his voice very quiet, almost not a question. Sherlock twisted his head around to look over his shoulder at John. His eyes washed over John’s expression, the seriousness and the worry and—fondness?

Sherlock nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Right.” John unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt, then rolled it up above his elbow. Sherlock rolled onto his other side and buried his face in John’s elbow.

The bite was so quick that John almost didn’t feel it, though Sherlock certainly wasn’t paying attention to trying to make it painless. He wasn’t entirely sure that was even something that he had control over anyway, and at the moment his entire mind was singing John, John, John, warm over and over in a chorus, and focusing on anything else was patently impossible.

At some point Sherlock became aware that John was petting his hair and that the flat had become stiflingly hot, and he drew back, dabbing at one or two stray drops of blood in John’s elbow.

“Sorry,” he said, feeling the heat rising in his cheeks. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to take so much.”

“Sherlock. It’s fine,” John said. “I’m surprised you wanted to actually, after…”

“Mmm,” Sherlock mumbled drowsily, settling back against the sofa cushions.

“We—I mean I. I really would like to talk about this, if—if that’s all right,” John said.

Sherlock snored in reply.

\--

Some time later, Sherlock became aware that there was a cup of still-warm tea on the table beside the sofa, and that John was curled in his chair, gazing at him with fondness tempered with worry.

“Awake then?” John asked. “I made you tea. I—I was worried. Is it normal to be so sleepy after…um, after?”

Sherlock yawned and stretched his way to a sitting position, and reached for the tea.

“A bit. I drank too much. I don’t usually—I mean, with the pills. I just take the minimum to keep the cold off,” Sherlock said.

“I do still want to talk,” John said. “I’m—I I know I can say it won’t happen again and I’m sorry and everything but I want—I want to show you that it won’t. If you will let me. That’s the only way that will mean anything.”

“John, I—” Sherlock paused. “I’m not angry. You, you know that? Right? I was just…I was scared,” he admitted.

“Oh God Sherlock I’m so—,” John swallowed, then took a breath. “I said I wouldn’t do that. I want to show you. It scares me when you’re so cold, and knowing that I can make you warm…I want to help. Please let me,” he asked.

Sherlock stared at him.

“I’ll—I’ll understand if you don’t want to,” John replied hastily. “I just—I like it, and I like that it makes you not cold.”

“You…you like it?” Sherlock asked, frowning. “I—I don’t understand.”

John looked at the floor. “Yeah. Well. I mean. I’ve been trying to hide it but. It er. Does something to me, when you.” He flushed, fairly mortified by this point. “When you drink. It does—“ John shook his head, unable to actually say those words out loud to Sherlock.

“Oh. I. Oh,” Sherlock blushed and looked away as he figured it out.

“Is it like that for you,” John asked, and the words came out mashed together into almost a single syllable.

“N-no,” Sherlock said carefully. “But I. I—it’s a cozy feeling. Not a—it’s not—that. The cold stays away longer when. When you’ve.” He took another sip of tea, embarrassed.

“Does. Does it bother you that I--” John asked hastily.

“No.” Sherlock’s eyes darted between John and the floor.

For a long moment they were both silent, and then John cleared his throat, his voice somewhat returned to normal.

“Then I have a proposal,” John said. “Every other day. Is that often enough that you won’t get cold in between if you take your pills on the off days, and. And I promise I won’t—ah. You know. Try to—make it. Something that it isn’t. For you, I mean.”

Sherlock nodded. “Every other day, yes, that will keep the cold away. And. I. Yes. To the other part. Thank you.”

“And I’m going to take a break from drinking,” John said, catching Sherlock’s gaze. “I don’t—I don’t want to let that get to the point where—”

“Your terms are acceptable,” Sherlock replied.

“Yeah. Um, good,” John said.

Sherlock shuffled the blanket around his shoulders and leaned back into the sofa. “I think—I’m going to go back to sleep if. If that’s—”

“Right yes, sorry,” John said hurriedly. “I shouldn’t have—I should let you sleep.”

Sherlock set his teacup on the side table and snuggled down into the blanket. “All right. Goodnight, John.”

John stayed in his chair for a few minutes, listening as Sherlock’s breathing evened out and he began to snore softly.

\--

With no new cases from Lestrade, Sherlock spent the next day and a half alternating between lying about on the sofa drinking tea and furiously composing on his violin. After the first four hours of violin, John called in to the clinic to see if he could pick up some extra hours to get himself away from the noise and his incredibly distracting and scantily dressed flatmate.

As the end of John’s shift approached, Sherlock grumbled and put his violin down. His fingertips were raw and aching and he hadn’t made any sounds that could honestly be described as “music” in over an hour.

The front door opened, and his heart stuttered.

“Sherlock, can you come round to the yard and have a look at—“ Lestrade started to say, but Sherlock rounded upon him with a glare.

“Get out!” He yelled, brandishing his violin’s bow like a sword. “GO!”

“Er…right. Tomorrow, then.” Lestrade backed out the door, keeping a wary eye on the detective.

When he was gone, Sherlock snatched up his violin again and dragged the bow across the A string, which had flattened to 398 Hertz from his earlier mistreatment of it. He turned the peg a hair’s breath, bringing it back to 442, the slight sharpness that he preferred. Sherlock closed his eyes, called up “Forest Green” in his mind, and began to play.

Sherlock played it once through in F major, because that was the key that the version he had memorized was written in. Then he played through the highest of the three harmony lines even though he had always disliked that particular harmonization. He switched back to the melody and played it again, and then flexed his fingers and launched back into this melody, this time in a different key.

B-flat major had always been a challenge for him—it was right on the border of “ just one or two low notes” and “fuck it, just play everything flat,” and working through the transposition on the fly in his head tickled in a pleasant way. He played it through twice in the new key to be sure he had it, then went up an octave.

He didn’t hear the door the next time it opened.

Absorbed in his own weird version of Vaughn Williams’ classic, Sherlock didn’t realize John had returned until he felt his hands closing around Sherlock’s right hand where he held the bow, gently removing it from his grasp. s

“Hey. You need a break,” John said. “You’re been at this awhile, yeah?“ He set the bow on the arm of the sofa and lifted Sherlock’s left hand from the strings. A smudge of red remained on the strings above the ebony fingerboard.

“It’s fine,” Sherlock protested. “I need to build those calluses back up anyway.”

“Lestrade is worried about you,” John said, setting the violin in its case. “Had a pint with him after work. He said you wouldn’t go give your statement earlier, that he had stopped by today.”

“Well, the reason for that should be obvious,” Sherlock said, flopping down onto the sofa. “I haven’t come up with a good lie yet as to why I was so useless at the suspect’s murder nest.”

“About that,” John said. “If you want to—”

“Yes.”

\--

John made sure to ask him every morning if Sherlock had taken his pills, and Sherlock was beginning to be suspicious of his intentions.

“Did you, ah,” John always paused, as if he had run out of air unexpectedly in the middle of the sentence, “did you take your pills yet?”

He would ask this while doing something ostensibly innocuous, like pouring water into the kettle or mashing a tea bag against the side of his mug to make his tea brew faster, and each time Sherlock would look at him sideways.

“Ye-es,” Sherlock replied every time, because he was back on schedule with the pills, taking them regularly every morning as soon as he woke up, and every other evening before bed. Between the regular pills and the…other thing that they were doing that he did not want to think too much about, Sherlock was warmer than he had ever been since it had happened.

\--

Sherlock shivered and burrowed deeper into the duvet stolen from John’s bed. He scowled at nothing in particular. It had been two weeks since their agreement and that was the longest he had gone without risking hypothermia ever since it had happened.

But now John was late.

It’s not like they had agreed on a specific time. But “every other evening” had wound up being “every other evening five minutes after John finishes his dinner” and while the precise time had varied on days that John worked a little late or didn’t work at all, it had never been later than seven pm.

Sherlock fiddled with the strap of his watch, eyeing the second hand as it moved past the six. Nine fifty seven and thirty two seconds precisely. John never stayed at work that late. Had he finally asked out the new receptionist? Sherlock admitted to himself that while distasteful, it was a possibility. Especially since they weren’t—well, since they weren’t. It was something that John might have done.

“Sherlock, dear, is John back yet?” Mrs. Hudson called as she deposited a plate of biscuits on the kitchen table.

“Hm. No,” Sherlock groused.

“It’s not like him to stay out this late,” Mrs. Hudson said. “I hope everything’s all right.”

“Of course he’s all right, why wouldn’t he be?”

“I don’t know what all you two get up to with chasing criminals, and Lestrade let that last one go, didn’t he?” Mrs. Hudson handed Sherlock a biscuit and sat down beside him on the sofa. “Budge up there, you.”

Sherlock grumbled but accepted the biscuit. “Yes, there was...a bit of a problem with the way we er. Apprehended him. Not strictly legal, apparently,” Sherlock said.

“Oh, well I wouldn’t worry. I’m sure everything is fine and he just had a few late patients at the clinic,” Mrs. Hudson said.

\--

Everything was not, in fact, fine. Lestrade swore and cradled his bleeding arm, while John ducked, narrowly avoiding the fist of the man who had followed him first out of the surgery and then around the corner a few blocks until John had turned into an alleyway and confronted him.

\--

“Where’s John?” Sherlock didn’t bother with a greeting. .

“I’m hardly your boyfriend’s keeper, brother mine,” Mycroft replied crossly. “Find him yourself.”

“Yes, you are,” Sherlock insisted, not bothering to negate the assumption. “You’re everyone’s keeper. Tell me where he is.”

Mycroft sighed.

“Fine, but you aren’t going to like it,” he warned.

On a date with another woman he met at a pub, then, Sherlock thought glumly. Figures. He draped the duvet over his shoulders and settled into the sofa.

“As of five minutes ago he was examining a body near Kensal Green with DI Lestrade,” Mycroft said, the words precise and sharp as though he were reading.

“Examining a—without me?” Sherlock grumbled. “Why would they—” Something cold and unpleasant began to take root in his stomach. “Never mind, I have to go,” he said absently, swiping left on his phone.

John was examining a body. With Lestrade, and without him, Sherlock. This was certainly the end, though no matter how Sherlock arranged and rearranged his memories of their more recent interactions with the DI he couldn’t find any angle from which it made sense. But clearly John had decided to end their…whatever it was, and now preferred to go on cases with Lestrade.

\--

John climbed the steps to 221B to find all of the lights in the sitting room still on and Sherlock snoring softly on the soda, wrapped in a duvet that John immediately recognized as his own.

The floor creaked as John took a few tentative steps towards the sofa, debating to himself whether or not he should wake Sherlock. He looked peaceful, but—today was a No Pills day and unless Sherlock had changed his habit and taken them, he would be blue and shivering before dawn.

Decision made, John crossed the rest of the way to the sofa and peeled back the edge of the duvet, careful not to touch the patch of bare shoulder where Sherlock’s dressing gown and frayed tee were stretched back.

He paused, chuckling to himself at the irony of him walking up to Sherlock, insensible and exposing his neck, and the sound of a familiar voice was finally enough to wake the detective.

“Mm—John?” Sherlock asked, the vowels lazy and indistinct from sleep.

“S’alright,” John said, smoothing the fabric of the dressing gown flat against Sherlock’s shoulder. “I was out late but I’m back now. You didn’t take your pills, did you?” He tried to prevent himself from sounding hopeful, from making what they were doing into something that it was clearly not, for Sherlock anyway.

“I—no, but you don’t have to…” Sherlock pulled the duvet back up, covering his neck and shoulders. “I mean, I didn’t expect you to still want…”

Later, John would look back at this conversation and recognize this for the truly perilous moment that it was. But when it happened, he said only what came immediately to mind.

“I’ll always want this,” John said, ruffling Sherlock’s hair. “I’m willing to continue as long as you are.”

“Yes,” Sherlock breathed. “John, yes, let’s—yes.”

John sat on the edge of the sofa and leaned back against Sherlock’s outstretched legs. “Well, let’s do it properly this time, then,” he said.

Sherlock blinked. “Are—are you sure? It’s…I mean, I’m told it can be—a lot. I’ve never…” He fiddled with the edge of the duvet.

John’s next words caught in his throat. Sherlock had hinted at this before, but the confirmation stunned him.

“I would be honored to be your first. If you’ll have me,” he whispered, ignoring the way his voice cracked and his stomach churned when he said the words that were so close to the words he actually wanted to say but never would. _It’s not like that for him_ , John reminded himself sternly. _If you want this to continue, don’t ruin it by pressuring him into something he clearly has no interest in._

Sherlock made a strangled sort of noise and flung himself at John, wrapping his arms around John’s shoulders and burying his face in John’s neck in one swift movement. He murmured something that sounded suspiciously like “my only,” and before John could try to work out what he meant by that, his heart was beating wildly at the first press of cold lips against his neck.

Then Sherlock bit, tentatively at first, and John’s mind flooded with sensation. He understood with razor clarity what Sherlock had meant by saying it was a lot and in spite of the stinging burn in his neck that seemed to be intensifying the longer Sherlock kept drinking, John wanted it to continue forever. He wanted the warmth to continue pouring out of himself, filling Sherlock until every cell of him was rosy and warm from John.

John was pulled from this dangerous train of thought by Sherlock’s lamp-like eyes, which were suddenly very close to John’s own.

“Have I taken too much?” Sherlock asked, his voice laced with worry. “It was difficult to focus…I had no idea. I had no idea,” he repeated, almost to himself in wonder.

John took a deep, steadying breath. “I’m all right,” he said, tearing his gaze from Sherlock’s eyes, then smiling fondly. “Ah, you’ve got a bit of— ” He brought his thumb to the corner of Sherlock’s lips and dabbed away the small red smudge.

Sherlock leaned into him. “Hmm. Thank you.”

“Bed?” John asked, after he trusted himself to speak. “Not—I mean can I help you to bed. You look about ready to pass out,” he added hastily.

“Yes.” Sherlock rose, wobbling on his feet a little as John stood, then leaned into him.

\--

John made sure to be home early on the next No Pills day.

“I prefer your elbow vein,” Sherlock murmured. “Larger, and less likely to blow out than the little wrist veins.”

“Okay,” John replied. “Do you want to—”

“Yes.” Sherlock brushed his lips against John’s elbow and closed his eyes. A moment passed and he realized that he had not started to drink yet, so he bit slowly into the soft skin, then froze when John sighed.

“Did that—I’m sorry, did—” Sherlock stumbled over the words, his lips still pressed to John’s arm.

“No, no, it was. It was good,” John replied, looking anywhere but at Sherlock. “I’m—it’s fine.”

Sherlock took a few more sips, then pressed his closed lips to John’s arm in reverence.

John’s breathing hitched and Sherlock turned away.

“I’m sorry, I….I don’t know why I did that. I just…” Sherlock picked at the back of his hand, trying to get the words to arrange themselves in his mind.

John waited, a fond and curious smile playing across his face.

“I…I wanted to,” Sherlock whispered. “I know you said—and I haven’t ever— I didn’t—but—and I wanted to so I did.”

“Hey. It’s—I mean. You know it’s what I’ve wanted. That hasn’t changed.” John leaned into Sherlock’s shoulder. “I’ve been trying not to pressure you. I hope I haven’t been.”

“Hm.” Sherlock slumped against John and hummed. “You haven’t, I don’t think.”

“I don’t want you feel like it…like we have to do anything. Because of what we have been doing,” John said.

“John. I want—” Sherlock closed his mouth, pressed his nose against John’s ear. “I’ve wanted—something like this for a long time. But if it’s just about the—the drinking for you then. ” His voice dropped to a whisper again, and his next words were very faint. “Then I don’t want to do it, because it—it isn’t about that for me.”

He sniffed. “This isn’t coming out right. I’m—”

“Sherlock. It’s fine. I think I—I think I get what you’re saying,” John said, tracing his fingers through Sherlock’s hair. “You ah. You had a bit of a crush?”

“Have. Present tense,” Sherlock mumbled, feeling his face burn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued...the outline that I have includes one more chapter, so I've finally changed the /? to an /4. See you soon (probably over in my potterlock fic Hail Thee, Festival Day because I just read Cursed Child and. I just have So Many Feelings about it.)

**Author's Note:**

> To be continued...

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover for Before, There was Cold by Emily_Nicaoidh](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8052652) by [Ghislainem70](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghislainem70/pseuds/Ghislainem70)




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